“The most fun night out on Broadway!” – The Daily Beast
Madeline Ashton is the most beautiful actress (just ask her) ever to grace the stage and screen. Helen Sharp is the long-suffering author (just ask her) who lives in her shadow. They have always been the best of frenemies…until Madeline steals Helen’s fiancé away. As Helen plots revenge and Madeline clings to her rapidly fading star, their world is suddenly turned upside down by Viola Van Horn, a mysterious woman with a secret that’s to die for.
After one sip of Viola’s magical potion, Madeline and Helen begin a new era of life (and death) with their youth and beauty restored…and a grudge to last eternity.
Time Out New York raves, “4 STARS! Death Becomes Her is savagely funny,” and Deadline declares it’s “wildly entertaining — a perfect musical comedy.” “Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard are two theatrical masterminds giving hilarious star turns” (The New York Times). Grammy® winner Michelle Williams is “irresistibly fabulous” (Theatermania), and “Christopher Sieber stops the show” (Time Out New York). Death Becomes Her, based on the classic 1992 film, is “a laugh-filled, tuneful musical to die for” (Variety).
Death Becomes Her’s deft score, by Broadway newcomers Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, gives the performers plenty of humor to play with, along with nicely overblown strains of mystery and grandeur when called for. The book by Marco Pennette, a veteran TV comedy writer, preserves key jokes from Martin Donovan and David Koepp’s screenplay while adding solid zingers of his own—when Madeline condescendingly suggests that Helen should change jobs, she notes that being a pharmacist is “like being a doctor and a cashier”—and only minimal injections of filler. (Don’t think gay audiencewon’t notice when you crib a joke from Maggie Smith!) Pennette’s most significant changes to the story, at the end of both acts, have the salutary effect of keeping the show’s focus securely on the two main women. Sieber stops the show in a drunken and frantic second-act number, “The Plan,” but in the end this Ernest is just not important.
This may be the one musical where you really might exit humming the set — but you’ll also remember the rapier-sharp repartee between Hilty and Simard, who lean into the material’s catty campiness with hilarious results. Simard’s Helen isn’t the only one who’s busting a gut at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. In addition, Hilty’s playfulness extends to her bio in the Playbill, where her credits are lifted directly from Streep’s résumé aside from a lone authentically Hilty TV credit, Smash, and the Streep-centric Instagram handle @ThisIsTotallyMegansRealBio. It’s a deft touch for a show that defies expectations in its all-out assault on the funny bone.
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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